The present invention relates to systems and methods for analyzing time series data to generate forecasts. These forecasts enable the analysis and display of statistical relationships between data series.
Many factors influence the success or failure of a business or other organization. Many of these factors include controllable variables, such as product development, talent acquisition and retention, and securing business deals. However, a significant amount of the variables influencing a business' success are external to the organization. These external factors that influence an organization are typically entirely out of control of the organization, and are often poorly understood or accounted for during business planning.
While these external factors are not necessarily able to be altered, being able to incorporate them into business planning allows a business to better understand the impact on the business, and make strategic decisions that take into account these external factors. This may result in improved business performance. However, it has traditionally been very difficult to properly account for or model these external factors; let alone generate meaningful forecasts using many different factors in a statistically meaningful and user friendly way.
For example, many current methods of statistical analysis are often manual and require segment specific user expertise, thereby substantially limiting their usefulness and utility. In addition, most organizational financial and reporting solutions generate reports and forecasts based mostly on internal historic organizational data, and ignore potentially important external factors.
As a result, current analytical methods are incomplete, time consuming and labor intensive processes that are inadequate for the today's competitive, complex and constantly evolving business landscape.
It is therefore apparent that an urgent need exists for organizational solutions that enable the forecasting using time series data sets. These improved data analytics substantially reduces the time and effort required to compute and display more accurate results to organizations.